20VC: The 2 Core Roles Played By The Best Seed Investors Today, What To Look For In Potential Co-Investors & Why Seed Funds Can Grow Ownership in Their Best Companies Across Rounds with Ron Bouganim, Founder @ Govtech Fund
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2018
⏱️ 46 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Ron Bouganim is the Founding Partner @ Govtech Fund, the first-ever venture capital fund dedicated to government technology startups. To date, he has backed some incredible category leaders including mark43, Neighbourly, MindMixer and SeamlessDocs just to name a few. Prior to GovTech, he was Accelerator Director @ Code for America and was an active angel investor and advisor working with more than twenty startups including ShareThrough, HelloSign, PagerDuty, and Close.io.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ron made his way into the world of technology and startups and became angel investing? How that led to the founding of Govtech and the belief in the space today?
2.) There is the notion that there many challenges to investing in Govtech and scaling companies in the space, how does Ron respond to the suggestion the sales cycles when selling to government are too long for startups to navigate successfully? How does Ron respond to the suggestion that the growth rates in the space are to low for venture returns? How does Ron respond to the suggestion that founders in the space are inherently older as only they have experienced the problems of government tech?
3.) Why does Ron believe that a vertically focused fund is the right strategy is creating a massively outperforming fund? How does Ron respond to the possibility of missing moonshots in alternate categories? What does Ron most look for in the co-investors that he invests with? What do they bring to the table?
4.) What does Ron believe are the 2 fundamental roles of a seed investor today? How does that differ from previous generations of seed funds? Why does Ron believe that fundraising and hiring help is now merely table stakes? What else can seed investors do to meaningfully move the needle for their portfolio?
5.) Why does Ron advocate for a highly concentrated portfolio? How does Ron respond to LP concerns around a lack of diversification? Does Ron believe that you can grow ownership of your best companies over subsequent rounds? What is the sign of success for Ron when the founder comes back for re-financing?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Ron’s Fave Book: Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Ron’s Most Recent Investment: Sema: Automated Code Maintenance
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ron on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back for another week on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings, |
| 0:04.0 | 1996 with 2Bs on Instagram. I always love to see you there and hear your thoughts and feedback |
| 0:08.9 | on guests and questions that you'd like to have for future episodes. But to the show stay, |
| 0:13.2 | and I'm very, very excited to welcome a dear friend and wonderful player in the ecosystem, |
| 0:17.2 | Ron Bouganim, found at GovTech Fund. The first ever venture capital fund dedicated |
| 0:21.9 | to government technology startups. To date, he's back some incredible category leaders, including |
| 0:26.2 | Mark 43, neighborly, mind mixer and seamless docs, just to name a few. And prior to GovTech |
| 0:31.6 | Fund, he was accelerated director at Code for America and was an active angel investor and |
| 0:35.8 | advisor, working with more than 20 startups, |
| 0:38.1 | including share through, hello sign, page of duty and close.io. I'd also want to say a huge thank |
| 0:43.1 | you to the wonderful Mr. Matt Mazio for the intro to Ron's day. I so appreciate that, my friend. |
| 0:47.5 | We mentioned some incredible companies in the intro there, and I want to spend a minute to talk |
| 0:50.9 | about Brex. The first corporate card for startups, Brex founders |
| 0:54.7 | Enrique M. Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate |
| 0:59.4 | card when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online sign-up, |
| 1:04.3 | no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty |
| 1:09.2 | incredible, I know, and you can sign up for |
| 1:11.3 | Brex today and get fees waived by entering the code Harry during sign-up. Honestly, it really is such |
| 1:16.8 | a special service. And with Brex in place, we now need a team to really use the cards, and that's |
| 1:21.5 | where Terminal comes in. Terminal is a startup that appreciates. Hiring amazing developers is really hard. Plus, it's even harder if you're |
| 1:28.1 | only looking in a 25-mile radius of your office. So Terminal is your dedicated partner in rapidly |
| 1:33.2 | standing up world-class remote technical teams. How do they deliver both speed and quality? Well, |
... |
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